I'm slowly beginning to wrap my head around Nevow. For one, while it's not explicit anywhere, it seems really clear that the intention is simply to add the Nevow root directory to your python path. In my case, I'm using the easy_install develop workaround:
python -c "import setuptools; execfile('setup.py')" develop
from the .../Nevow path. This means I can svn update, and that version is working without any more reinstalls.
In addition, I got thrown for a loop with the Athena tutorial, because it suggests that to understand the Nevow plugin search system, you should just look at the Twisted plugin search system. This had me with a custom <emph>twisted</emph>/plugins directory, and using pdb to step through code to see why it wasn't getting loaded by Nevow, when clearly the Twisted plugin system was populating this with the normal 'dropin.cache' and soforth.
But now I understand that the nevow/plugins and the twisted/plugins are similarly handled but distinct repo's.
So, while I have a borderline unhealthy desire to learn twisted & nevow, and will work through this stuff, I recon a lot of people might have a look and say, "WTF!" and go to Django or something. I'd like to help fix the documentation as I learn, but I don't want to write the wrong thing either. So, here are some changes I would make if OK to the Nevow and Athena docs on the Wiki:
1) This is the only obviously wrong thing - on the Athena page, it says that you should install modules into a plugin directory under Nevow instead of nevow. This is confusing and had me creating a Nevow/plugins directory in my private PYTHONPATH (which makes sense at first, as there is a Nevow directory as well as a nevow directory if you checkout from svn).
2) Modify the Nevow install instructions to explain that neither ./setup.py install or easy_install are fully supported. Suggest easy_install develop or similar as preferred alternative, outright copying or adding the Nevow direcotry to your PYTHONPATH as a secondary (as well as setting up scripts somewhere in your PATH). I would just fix the install to work properly, but I'm not sure what would be "right" more on that below.
3) Regarding, e.g. javascript plugins, it seems that the convention is to install both user and 3rd party packages into the nevow package. This is very different than what most people are used to, but quite similar to the way e.g. an in-place Zope install behaves (particularly if you are doing an in-place install as I describe above). I don't like doing this - as it moves me away from a clean separation of "my" code from "your" code.
3a) So, for example, after getting the thing working with the stock nevow/plugins directory, I standardized on having a local nevow/plugins directory as a sibling of my tac file. I would suggest this be the recommended (or at least an alternative) method described in the wiki - this keeps all example files bundled under the same root dir. This also allows the possibility of bundling a tar or zip of an athena package, you un-archive it, and the example just works with twistd -ny example.tac from where it sits. (well, you need to alter the /path/to/your/file to sibpath(__file__, 'mymodule.js')).
3b) I would go a step further and suggest that, as in zope, a way to create "instances" be created. This would just mean populating a directory with things like a plugins direcotry, a js dir for nevow.athena.autoJSPackage to load and other stuff I haven't learned about yet. A set of scripts localized for that instance would add the appropriate root to the python path before running. Or, you could just require people to run twistd from the root dir of the bundle. This would be remarkably similar to the "solution" for 3a.
3c) I'm still a bit unclear on how python deals with identically named packages in different directories in the path. So, for example, I know have two nevow/plugins directories on my path. Everything seems to work fine, and indeed, the athena.JSDependencies seems to be able to find files from both. Even if I add an __init__.py file to my own nevow/plugins directory, the autoJSPackage call from the default nevow/plugins/__init__.py seems to fire correctly. But at some point, name collisions are necessarily going to be a problem. I could see some _very_ funny errors arising from this, e.g. if the python interpreter simply uses the first file it finds, it could load a .py file from one directory, then load an __init__.py file from another directory which overrides the objects loaded from that first .py file... pointers would be appreciated on this.
3d) Speaking of strange .js includes, some system (correctly?) associates the nevow/empty.js file with most Nevow classes. But for root classes, you also get these __init__.js associations, which are non-existent *.js files. Is this a bug?
4) Perhaps have a page describing Divmod wiki etiquette... answering the question of this e-mail, which is "How liberal should I be in editing the Wiki(s)?"
5) Why do all examples have twistd -noy, when -y implies -o?
Anyway, as I've said, I'd like to leave some breadcrumbs for those right behind me before I forget what it's like to be such a noob! Any feedback or guidance on appropriate help is appreciated. In particular, how I should proceed now and in future with Wiki / documentation edits.